I am a Warm Shape

Spin off - ‘Now and Then’, page 61

Encompassing Nature – Sappho, Lady Komachi and an Irish Bard

Robert Hass speaks of a source book called Encompassing Nature that ‘attempts to collect the whole history of the human response to the natural world – in science, philosophy, theology, poetry – from ancient Mesopotamia to the bewigged rationalists of eighteenth century Europe’ (Hass, 61). I love the way that the anonymous poet of the Irish poem uses his identity in relation to the Natural world. He is part of Nature so much so that he becomes inseparable from it.